It is frequently desirable to bake pastry-type food items which have decorative appearances. During the Christmas season, for example, it is common to make cookies or other pastries having the shapes of Christmas trees, stars, birds, angels, and other shaped objects symbolic of the Christmas season. It is also common to make pastry items having the shape of various flowers and the like. A common method for making such decorative pastry items is to prepare an appropriate dough which is rolled into a sheet-like material. Thereafter, the sheet is cut with a conventional cookie cutter or the like to obtain a two-dimensional dough image having an exterior silhouette of a desired object. Food coloring often is blended into or applied to the dough surface prior to or after baking to give the configured pastry item a desired coloring.
It is also known that three-dimensional pastry items can be made by manually molding dough in its plastic stage, into a desired shape. For example, the dough first may be rolled into a conventional sheet and, thereafter, the edge portions of the sheet folded upwardly, for example, around a center in order to give the appearance of a flower.
The conventional method of baking a decorative pastry item also can be used to form decorative clay items. For example, a suitable clay having a plastic stage can be molded into a desired shape, and thereafter dried to reach a hardened stage. Some types of clay can be molded while in the plastic stage and allowed to dry and harden at room temperature, whereas other clays are hardened by application of heat.
It is frequently desirable to make three-dimensional decorative items which have elevated portions extending horizontally outward of a central portion. For example, an item with the appearance of a flower can be made with petals extending upward around the center portion with the elevated ends of the petals extending horizontally outward. Decorative items having such a shape generally cannot be made by manually molding dough or clay in a plastic stage because the weight of the material causes the horizontally extending elevated ends to droop downward before the material hardens.
It would be desirable to provide a system for making a three-dimensional, self-supporting object with elevated portions which can be made of a pastry dough or clay material which will be retained in the desired shape while the object is being dried or baked.
Moreover, it is desired that a device be available for supplying the necessary amount of material to a three-dimensional mold whereby the material can readily rest on the mold and thereafter take the appropriate set in the three-dimensional mold. It is important, however, that neither too little nor too much dough, clay or material to be shaped be added to the mold. Finally, it is desired that the three-dimensional shape be molded in a relatively efficient and expeditious manner.